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Chandra Serendipitous Extragalactic X-Ray Source ID (SEXSI) Catalog

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

The Serendipitous Extragalactic X-Ray Source Identification (SEXSI) program is designed to extend greatly the sample of identified extragalactic hard X-ray (2 - 10 keV) sources at intermediate fluxes (~10<sup>-13</sup> to 10<sup>-15</sup> erg/cm<sup>2</sup>/s). SEXSI, which studies sources selected from more than 2 deg<sup>2</sup>, provides an essential complement to the Chandra Deep Fields, which reach depths of 5 x 10<sup>-16</sup> erg/cm<sup>2</sup>/s (2 - 10 keV) but over a total area of less than 0.2 deg<sup>2</sup>. In their published paper, the authors describe the characteristics of the survey and their X-ray data analysis methodology. They present the cumulative flux distribution for the X-ray sample of 1034 hard sources and discuss the distribution of spectral hardness ratios. Their log N -log S in this intermediate flux range connects to those found in the Deep Fields, and by combining the data sets, they constrain the hard X-ray population over the flux range in which the differential number counts change slope and from which the bulk of the 2 - 10 keV X-ray background arises. They further investigate the log N - log S distribution separately for soft and hard sources in the sample, finding that while a clear change in slope is seen for the softer sample, the hardest sources are well described by a single power law down to the faintest fluxes, consistent with the notion that they lie at lower average redshift. In the SEXSI program, fields were selected with high Galactic latitude (|b| > 20 degrees) and with declinations accessible to the optical facilities available to the authors (declination > -20 degrees). They used observations taken with Chandra's Advanced Camera for Imaging Spectroscopy (ACIS I- and S-modes; Bautz et al., 1998, Proc. SPIE, 3444, 210) only (for sensitivity in the hard band). All the fields presented in this paper have data that are available in the Chandra public archive. This table was created by the HEASARC in June 2004 based on <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/ApJ/596/944/table4">CDS Catalog J/ApJ/596/944/table4</a>.dat which is a representation of Table 4 from the published version. Note that it does not include the Soft-Band-Only Source Catalog (Table 6 in the published version of the paper). This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/chansexsi
Data Last Modified 2025-09-10
Category Astrophysics
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 58485f42-d2a4-49db-b682-ca7ddac55b5b
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/chansexsi.html
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 3b9079eecbd7bfcd766a759218ebb671703bf276465e027753937f9241444def
Source Schema Version 1.1

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